and disgust that great body, which must ever be the
strength of a Conservative Government, by twitting the Duke of
Wellington and attacking with sarcasms or reproaches certain
measures or omissions, or particular members of Government, and
especially the Duke himself. The Duke is, after all, the idol of
the Tories, and they will not endure that a youth like Stanley
shall avail himself of his accidental advantages to treat their
great man with levity and disrespect; and all this he has not
coolness, sagacity, and temper enough to see, nor to discern that
his most becoming and dignified course would be to conduct
himself with a seriousness and gravity suitable to the importance
of the crisis and of the part he aspires to play and the
magnitude of the interests which are at stake. If he believes in
his conscience that the Opposition are animated with a spirit of
faction, and that their triumph would be the forerunner of
revolution or confusion, he should take his stand on a great
principle, and support the Government in such a manner as might
best enable it to confound the schemes of its antagonists; but
all this time he is dreading to be called a Tory, and he does not
certainly give up the hope and notion of reuniting himself with
the moderate section of his late colleagues. He endeavours to
keep up an amicable intercourse with them, and to make them
believe that he has no intention of connecting himself more
closely with this Government. Such ambiguous conduct, and his
occasional asperities and incivilities, have begun already to
disgust and alienate the Tories; and though they have too much
need of him now not to be obliged to restrain the expression of
their feelings, the time may come when he will have need of them,
and he will then find the inconvenient consequences of his
present behaviour.

February 27th, 1835 {p.223}

They divided at half-past one this morning, 309 to 302. I went
over the list before dinner, and made out a majority of six
(correct all but one). Gisborne, Howick, and Graham spoke
tolerably, O'Connell very good for the first ten minutes, and
very bad all the rest. I was not there. Certainly Stanley's
conduct is queer. Notwithstanding the sharp things he said
against Government in his speech on Wednesday, and various little
marks of scorn he throws out here and there, he said to Francis
Egerton on Tuesday, after all the Opposition men had been
speaking, 'Why does not Peel get up, or at least